Find out if your insurance policy may cover business interruption losses caused by coronavirus, and what you can do next, with the help of our policy checker and frequently asked questions (FAQs).
We stopped updating the policy checker on 16 August 2021. This means that it does not represent an up-to-date indication of whether your policy is likely to provide cover based on cases decided after the Supreme Court ruling.
There are other resources which you can use to see if there have been recent rulings which might affect your claim. The Commercial Court has information on Covid-19 business interruption insurance cases[2]. If policyholders want to look up a particular judgment themselves they can be found at the British and Irish Legal Information Institute[3].
Many solicitors firms also provide updates on recent cases; for example, our legal team during the test case, Herbert Smith Freehills, provide updates[4] on significant cases though the timing may vary. Some barrister chambers also provide updates on their websites or blogs, particularly if their barristers are instructed on the case.
When new court rulings are published, firms will need to consider carefully how the ruling may impact the interpretation of their policies, and their claims and complaints handling, considering their obligations to their customers.
Where it is identified that a new court ruling has a possible wider beneficial impact for customers, we expect firms to provide:
- details of any proposed remedial action to ensure that the beneficial impact of the final outcome is applied to similar groups of customers, and/or those customers potentially affected
- where appropriate, reasons why such remedial action may not be carried out
Where it has been determined that a new court ruling has no wider beneficial impact, we would expect firms to explain to their customers why it was considered that there was no wider beneficial impact to other potentially similarly impacted, or other potentially affected, customers.
Where firms decide not to reopen claims – for example, because they consider they would have reached the same outcome even applying the reasoning in the new ruling – we expect firms, in appropriate circumstances, to be open and transparent about their reasons for doing so. Customers should be given a chance to consider those decisions and complain if they disagree with them.